


The Cards We're Dealt

by soupmetaphors



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Era, Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-11
Packaged: 2018-07-12 00:10:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7076401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soupmetaphors/pseuds/soupmetaphors
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every deck has cards, and every card has a story. Draw one. See the stories they tell, of blades in the dark and whispered celebrations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> These are based on the Major Arcana, specifically the Rider-Waite deck.

**0: The Fool**

The sewers smelled of sickness and disease, and he scraped through it on his belly. Rats squeaked from the shadows, corpses bundled and shoved into every available gap. 

He did not seem to see them. Scrabbling with a single-minded determination to get to his goal, to see the sunlight. _To get her back. To avenge her._ Two different people, same name, same face, different trajectories.

And they were waiting for him, beyond the filth-encrusted walls. 

Down, up, under, over. Movement, a constant, never mind the doubts starting to fester in his heart. 

_We want to help._

Help, help, help. No one could help, could they? Get him closer, get him a step nearer to justice. But what was he talking about? Coldridge was still _so_ close behind him- He could smell the torturer’s hot brand, feel the hard bunk against his back, hear the guards taunting and snickering among themselves.

Coldridge was so close, but she was closer. The Empress, and how she’d stared up at him with desperation. How that same emotion had been mirrored in his eyes. 

When he stumbled out of the sewers, the weak light still hurt his eyes, made them water. Or had they been watering already? He wasn’t sure anymore. 

A man and a boat. 

A man calling his name, a boat to take him far enough away. Words, exchanged. He could smell the salt in the air, better than the iron and blood that was more familiar. 

The boat ride was smooth. Taking him to the future, the future he would pave with his own two hands.

But he kept looking back, looking over his shoulder. Kept watching for the Tower, where someone had died. _Two_ people, in fact.

Two people had died. But one had been resurrected for a final, damning purpose. 


	2. Chapter 2

**1: The Magician**

A god, they whispered, hands slick with oil. 

Was there no higher gift to be bestowed upon mankind? To be ascended, to be given to the wolves and expected to lead the pack? To unravel the mysteries that only so few could comprehend without turning into howling, gibbering messes?

_A god._

They put rings on his fingers. The metal was cold, but he did not complain. He did not speak, not a word, not a sound. 

Mute, they whined, but that was not true. He did not speak out of apprehension, out of fear, out of wariness. Human emotions that were slowly, slowly, being forgotten.

His hair was combed, his clothes renewed. 

Perfect, they sighed. 

How do you make something so chaotic, so endless? 

You don’t: The cosmos shape themselves, leave gaps so mortal eyes can behold in tiny, tiny glimpses, through windows that should have long ago been hidden by curtains. 

How do you make an inhabitant for the gaping chasm, that breach of time and space?

You watch the skies. You wait for the signs. 

You find that child and pour oil over his grimy skin and prepare him. 

They put him next to the leviathans: Magical, wondrous, abused, vanishing slowly as the hunters picked them off one by one.

But no one would pick him off. Not for years and years that turned into centuries and millenniums. 

He remembered, the boy with the beautiful black eyes. 

_A god_ , they had whispered, when they had surrounded him and started the ritual to finish it all. _Divine._

Divine and as inhuman as he was human, watching the bright blue lights encase his new world.


	3. Chapter 3

**2: The High Priestess**

The whip flicked across her shoulder blades, drawing an unbidden cry from her lips.

Blood ran down her back, barely soaked up by clothes already in tatters. Knees on the hard concrete. The blood rushing to her ears, like war drums thumping to the rhythm of her heart.

Another sharp _crack_. Yet another cry. Her throat raw from screeching. Hands gripped her apron tightly, crushing the fabric. From beneath her lashes, she dared risk a glance upwards, towards the balcony.

Jessamine’s solemn face looked down at her. There was no merriment in her eyes nor any indication of being linked with her in any way. So different from that laughing, wild-eyed girl down in the cellar. So hard, so unforgiving.

Delilah did not call out. Did not stretch her hands in a gesture of forgiveness, did not plead for mercy. She was above such things.

Instead, she held the other girl’s gaze. Held it firm, even as the whip came down on her again and again, as blood dripped down her sides and onto the ground; until Jessamine turned and stepped into the relative comforts of the rooms.

A sneer curled Delilah’s lip, despite herself.

 _Never cross a witch_ , she thought, dully, that old advice filtering through her hazy thoughts.

Delilah was no witch, no, not yet. But would they so rue the day she held all that power in her hands.

* * *

 

She heard of Jessamine’s death through ears carved from marble. Heard of the way her body hit the floor, all that lovely blood pooling around her, red like the carpets they used to play on in their youth.

She watched through eyes made of stone as they took the young Lady Emily away, kicking and screaming for her mother, for her loyal dog.

 _Never cross a witch_ , she thought, as she brought out her paints. _Your mother made that mistake._

Could have been fixed. Could have been made lighter. All these years had passed, and Delilah still bore those marks on her back: Bitter trophies for one evening of adventure.

(Jessamine had turned her back and gone inside, had locked Delilah out of that home, had shattered the bond between them. Perhaps she did not remember anymore, that strange girl with wilder eyes than she.)

It did not matter now- Jessamine Kaldwin was dead. But Emily lived. Emily, with her mother’s eyes and her mother’s face, who potentially had the Empire in her little hands. Emily, who would pay for her mother’s traitorous deed.

 _Never,_ ever _cross a witch._

Delilah took out her brush, stared at the fresh canvas before her.

_Especially Delilah Copperspoon._


	4. Chapter 4

**3: The Empress**

She was little more than a girl when her father died. Little more than a girl with noble blood and pretty dresses, and now a crown on her head to top it all off. 

_Will she grow up like me?_ Jessamine wondered, watching Emily dance around the garden, barefoot, not a care in the world. 

_Will she only know this plague, this suffering?_

In Dunwall Tower, all those problems seemed simultaneously closer and a million miles away. It made her uneasy, made her wake up restless, tossing and turning. 

And Corvo’s absence had only put her more on the edge, although she hid well that fact from anyone who’d question. The Empress had to be strong, wise, steering her lands in the right direction at all times- Or risk drowning in the waves. 

But the sea was getting rougher. 

Sighing quietly, Jessamine looked back down at her desk: Plans, notes, blueprints, a scatter of paper that was looking less and less appealing by the minute. All the problems in Dunwall, crawling to her on scraped knees, begging, _begging_ , to be solved.

That was her duty, no? And her father’s before her. And Larisa Olaskir before him, and so on, so forth. Rulers did not just rule. They governed. They protected. They _saved_. Even if that meant breaking into a thousand, glittering pieces. 

Emily called for her. Her daughter’s voice shook her out of her reverie, and she moved away from the desk, nearer towards the windows that opened out into the garden. 

“Yes, darling?” she asked, stopping at the threshold. “Is something the matter?” 

The child was standing still in the garden, as if suddenly struck by a serious thought. When she looked at Jessamine, the childish glee had subsided. 

(Seeing Emily- so _young_ to have that expression on her face- scared her, although the motherly smile remained in place.)

“You’re worried.” Emily’s hands twisted behind her back. “Aren’t you? About the plague.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Your face. You’re… sad.”

Sad because people were dying in the streets. Worried because the bodies were piling high. Lost, lost, lost, like the time she was a child, wandering down into the city at night. 

Jessamine’s smile softened. She shook her head, dismissively. “You need only worry about that when you’re Empress, Emily.”

And that would be a long time off. When Dunwall was free and clean, when the fear dispersed, the whispers of unrest that were steadily growing to a roar. 

_An end is coming_ , she thought, and fought back a shudder: The thought had bloomed out of nothing, like a poisonous seed. _An end of an era._

“Mother?” Emily’s voice was full of concern. 

“Come inside,” Jessamine said. “I heard the maids say they’ve prepared your favorite tarts in the kitchen.”

A grin, Emily catching her hand and leading her deeper into the residence, no doubt headed for the kitchen. 

Jessamine didn’t turn back to close the windows. She didn’t even _glance_ at the papers fluttering on the desk. (Which would be soaked by rain, she would discover, an hour after being down in the kitchen.)

_An end of an era is coming._

But the Outsider take her if she wouldn’t fix Dunwall first.


End file.
